Lowball: A Wild Cards Novel

by George R. R. Martin

  “Anyway,” Dina said. “I’d like to see the rockets.”

  “Okay.” Pressing his luck seemed a good idea. “This weekend?”

  “I’ve got family stuff on Saturday,” she said. “How about Sunday?”

  “Sure.”

  “I can take the train out, and you can pick me up at the station. I’ll see the rockets, and then you’ll take me out to dinner.”

  “Great.”

  “At a restaurant,” she added.

  “If you like.”

  Gordon decided that being a romantic was working for him. Until the weekend, when he found that Steely Dan had gone missing.

  “Another joker vanished,” Franny said. He looked around Steely Dan’s living room, his pen paused over his notebook without anything to write. “Another element in the series,” he said. “And this time, the crime happens in New Jersey. And you think that dog-training facility may have something to do with it?”

  Gordon followed Franny as he prowled into Dan’s kitchen, where a half-eaten breakfast of eggs and sausage sat on the dinette next to a cold cup of coffee. If there’d been a knock on the door while Dan was eating, he’d have left his breakfast and walked to the door to open it … and then what? A clout on the head, a jab with a Taser? Dan was strong, but his skin only looked like blackened steel. He was as vulnerable to a weapon as any nat.

  “That Russian at the facility was very interested in Steely Dan,” Gordon said. “Kept staring at him.”

  “Jokers get stared at,” said Franny. “More in the sticks than anywhere, I imagine.” He frowned. “The Jersey cops looked into that place when Tommy Heffer turned up there. But it’s legit—they even sell their dogs to the Jersey state cops.”

  “They could have a legitimate business on top of whatever it is they’re really up to,” Gordon said.

  “Maybe,” Franny conceded. “But there’s no grounds for a warrant.”

  “I suppose not,” Gordon said.

  If only Dina had sensed something.

  And the weekend started so well, he thought. Normally Friday was one of his busy days, for the simple reason that a lot of people got killed on Thursday night. The reason the homicide rates jumped on Thursday was that Friday was usually payday, and by Thursday people were starting to run short of money.

  The usual scenario ran something like this:

  1. Mommy wants to use the remaining money to buy Little Timmy’s school lunch on Friday.

  2. Daddy wants to use the money to buy beer.

  Therefore:

  3. Daddy beats Mommy to death, takes the money, and gets drunk.

  Unfortunately Daddy is usually unable to reason out the next couple of steps, which are:

  4. Daddy ends up in prison, and;

  5. Little Timmy gets lost in the foster care system, which mightily increases the odds of Timmy becoming an angry sociopath who perpetuates the cycle of violence into the next generation.

  The other high time for homicide was late Saturday night and early Sunday morning, where the motivation might also be money, but was usually sex and/or love.

  However, on this particular week in May, the bliss of a beautiful spring seemed to have descended on New York, and all the Daddies had decided they didn’t need the beer after all and taken all the Little Timmys of the city to the park to play catch, and Gordon was finished with his work by one in the afternoon. So he gave himself and Gaida the rest of the day off and took the train to Warren County, where he spent the rest of the afternoon loading model rockets with his homemade APCP and firing them into the mellow May sky.

  On Saturday Steely Dan was scheduled to come round in the afternoon to help plot a static test facility for the aerospike engine, but he hadn’t turned up. Gordon called his home and mobile with no result, then called the garage where he worked. His boss said he hadn’t come in for work on Friday, and that he’d called Dan’s cell phone without getting an answer.

  Steely Dan lived in an old shiplap farmhouse that came with twenty acres of decaying apple orchard. Gordon drove there, found Dan’s truck and car in the garage, and pounded on the door without result. That’s when he called Franny Black, and Franny called the Jersey police, who still hadn’t turned up.

  New Jersey loved its jokers, that was clear.

  Franny had found Dan’s spare key under a rock in the garden, and he’d let the two of them inside. “No sign of violence,” Franny said, prowling into Dan’s bedroom. “Nothing obviously stolen. No sign of abduction at all.”

  Frustration flared in Gordon’s nerves. “I can tell you one thing,” he said. “Dan didn’t do Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.”

  “Christ.” Franny rolled his eyes. “That lead went nowhere,” he said. “Just like I told him it would.”

  “Any leads on El Monstro?”

  Franny shook his head, and tapped the butt end of his pen against his jaw. “Jokers,” Franny said. “Dogs. Jokers and dogs. Dogs and jokers.” He waved a hand in frustration. “I don’t get it.”

  “What I get about the Jersey cops,” Gordon said, “is that they care more about the dogs than the jokers.”

  Franny hesitated, then put a hand on Gordon’s arm. “I’ll find your friend.”

  “Let’s hope,” Gordon said, “that he’s not found stretched out on a road somewhere.”

  The Jersey police did eventually show up, but Gallo had the weekend off and wasn’t among them, and Franny had to explain everything from the beginning. Gordon lacked the patience to hear it, so he went back to his cabin and for lack of anything better to do took one of his rockets out of the barn and put it on the launcher. He pressed the igniter into the solid fuel at the base of the rocket and connected it to the nine-volt battery and remote receiver. He then stepped to a safe distance, flicked the rocker switch on his remote control to ON, and saw the LEDs shift from Safety to Armed. He poised his thumb over the Fire button, looked at the rocket, made sure his binoculars were in his other hand, and pressed the button.

  Gordon raised his binoculars to his eyes as the rocket flew straight and true for six or eight hundred meters, then ran out of fuel, popped its parachute, and drifted home to Earth.

  He watched the launch without pleasure. After the rocket drifted silently to its meeting with the lush New Jersey meadow, Gordon stared at it for a long while, frustration building in his heart, and then he put the rocket gear back in the barn and carried his binoculars to the car. He drove to the grove of silver maples from which he and Dina had observed the IDS facility, parked, went into the woods, and settled down to observe the compound.

  The NYPD would call Gordon’s operation a “plant.” Everyone else in the world called it a “stakeout.”

  Observation didn’t reveal much. A trainer exercised half a dozen German shepherds on a dog run inside the compound. Both the dogs and the trainer seemed to be enjoying themselves. Occasionally Gordon saw people walking from one building to another. He was too far away to recognize any of them. He coped with the tedium by planning a more scientific investigation of the compound. He’d visit a spy store in Manhattan, he decided, buy some boom mikes, a video camera with a telephoto lens, a capacious hard drive capable of holding twenty-four hours’ worth of images.

  If Steely Dan’s distinctive silhouette appeared on any of the video, or his distinctive strangled-puppet voice on audio, that would suffice for a warrant. Or so he imagined.

  Gordon was working out the finer details of this fantasy when he heard a car slowing on the highway behind him. He turned and his heart gave a lurch as he saw a white panel van pulling up onto the highway shoulder behind his Volvo.

  Moist earth squelched beneath his feet as he ducked behind a hackberry bush, then raised his binoculars. He could see only the dark silhouette of a driver behind the windscreen. The driver seemed to be peering around, looking for the Volvo’s driver. Gordon huddled into himself on the far side of the hackberry.

  After thirty seconds or so the driver gunned his engine, then pulled the van back onto the highway
. Gordon watched as he drove past, then turned into the IDS facility.

  I believe I have been busted, he thought. If the driver had got his license plate, they could have his ID in short order. He’d been in newspapers with one thing or another, and all they’d have to do to get his picture was Google his name.

  Maybe Dina was right, and he really sucked as an investigator.

  Sunday afternoon with Dina wasn’t a success. The day was gray and overcast, with scattered showers, and Gordon was too distracted by Dan’s disappearance to play host. Though Dina actually seemed interested in the rockets and the big aerospike engine sitting unassembled in the barn, Gordon himself couldn’t raise his usual enthusiasm. As he loaded one of his bigger rockets with APCP, he told Dina about his plan to stake out the IDS facility, and asked what kind of cameras and detectors would be best.

  “I’m not an expert on any of that stuff,” Dina said. “You should ask some of the detectives back at Fort Freak—Kant or somebody. They’re used to running plants.”

  “Franny Black is supposed to be in charge of the investigation.”

  “Little Mister Golden Drawers. The Spy from the Commissioner’s Office.” Her face gave a little twist of distaste, and then she gave the matter more thought. “It doesn’t have to be you running the plant,” she pointed out. “You don’t need a warrant to surveil a place, or to point a shotgun mic out a window. Franny could do it legally.” She cackled. “And the rest of the precinct would love it if he spent all his time out here.”

  Gordon nodded. “I’ll talk to him.”

  Dina gave another laugh. “And if Franny weren’t so wet behind the ears,” she said, “he’d know that while he can’t get a warrant to visit IDS to look for a missing joker, there are agencies who have a job inspecting places like IDS. There has to be some Jersey state agency who has the right to walk in and make sure the dogs aren’t being abused.” She thought for a moment, her eyes staring into space, and then she snapped her fingers. “Office of Animal Welfare,” she said. “I’ve worked with them a couple times. I can make some calls for you.”

  “I’d appreciate that.”

  She looked at the rocket. “How far can that one go up?”

  “A couple miles.”

  Dina was startled. “Seriously?”

  “Sure. Three stages, it’ll go high. I have to make sure there aren’t any aircraft around.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “You got rockets bigger than that?”

  “Sure. But I’m a lot more careful about firing them off. Some of them, I have to go to Nevada.”

  She grinned. “Area 51?”

  He gave her a blank look. “Where?”

  “Never mind.”

  “I go to Black Rock,” Gordon said.

  She smiled, shook her head. “That’s great,” she said.

  Gordon had the feeling he’d just missed something.

  He shouldered the five-foot-long rocket and they walked out into a meadow wet with spring showers and fragrant with the scent of wildflowers. Dina followed, carrying the launch rod that supported the rocket while it was on the ground. Gordon readied the rocket and connected the battery. After they retreated to a safe distance, Gordon listened for any approaching aircraft and heard nothing beyond the sough of the wind. He took the control out of his pocket, pressed the rocker switch to ON, watched the LEDs shift to Armed, and then handed the control to Dina.

  “Be my guest,” he said. “Just press the red button.”

  A delighted smile flashed across Dina’s face. Gordon decided he liked the smile a lot. “Really?” she asked.

  “Sure.” He readied his binoculars.

  Dina looked from the control to the rocket and back. “Do I do a countdown or anything?”

  “You can do a countdown,” Gordon said, “recite a poem, sing ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’ Whatever you like.”

  “Three. Two. One.” She flashed the smile again. “To the Moon!” She pushed the button and the rocket hissed upward.

  The staging worked flawlessly, with no tip-off, and the first stage tumbled back to the ground while the second stage pierced the low cloud and disappeared. Even the hiss of rocket exhaust faded. There was a distant pop as the third stage separated and—Gordon trusted—ignited. The scent of burnt propellant tinged the odor of spring flowers. The second stage, trailing streamers, drifted down through the cloud layer and landed fifty feet away. And then the third stage arrowed down, aimed like a spear at the ground.

  “Oh dear,” Gordon said, and then the falling stage impaled the turf with the sound of a wet slap.

  Gordon and Dina walked to the third stage, which had crumpled beyond repair. “Parachute failure,” Gordon said.

  “Maybe we’ll make it to the Moon next time,” said Dina.

  “We’ll send up a really big one,” Gordon said. “I’ll get Dan to come out and…” His voice trailed away as he remembered that Dan had gone missing.

  Dina touched his arm. “We’ll get him back,” she said.

  Gordon wasn’t comforted. Dogs and jokers, he thought. Jokers and dogs.

  Gordon decided to take Dina to dinner amid the bustle and excitement of Phillipsburg, the county’s largest town. Because they were taking the train to New York and wouldn’t be coming back, Gordon locked the cabin and closed the gate on the road as they left. Rain drummed down, and Gordon turned on the wipers.

  “So there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask,” he said as he pulled from his rural route onto Highway 519. “Do you think you’re a romantic?”

  Dina was surprised. “Me?” she said. “I don’t think so.”

  A burst of rain clattered on the roof. “With your skills,” Gordon said, “you could be a dog trainer, or a dog whisperer, or whatever they’re called. Or you could have a famous dog act and travel around the world putting on shows. But instead you wear a uniform and work in a dangerous part of town and catch criminals.” He grinned at her. “Isn’t that a romantic thing to do?” At least as romantic, he thought, as cutting up dead bodies.

  Dina knit her brows in thought. “Those other jobs you mention,” she said, “they don’t come with pensions.”

  Gordon looked at her. “Are pensions romantic?”

  She grinned. “I hope so,” she said. “I plan on living happily ever after with mine.” She waved a hand. “With the NYPD, I’ve got a pension, I’ve got a decent paycheck, and what I do isn’t really dangerous—I just follow a dog around. The only problem I have is finding an apartment that’ll let me keep dogs.”

  “You’ve got dogs of your own?”

  “Yeah. Two rescue dogs. They were abused.”

  “Bring them next time you come,” Gordon said. “They’ll like the country.”

  She gave an unexpected scowl, and Gordon was startled at this reaction to his invitation; but then he decided she was thinking of the abuse her dogs had suffered. Then her head whipped around, and Gordon realized that they were passing the IDS facility, visible as a floodlit glow in the rain. “Stop!” she said urgently.

  “What?”

  “Stop. Now.”

  His mind whirling, Gordon slowed and pulled to the side of the road. Dina’s eyes remained focused on the IDS compound. Her hand scrabbled for the door release.

  “I’ve got to get closer,” she muttered.

  “Wait,” Gordon said. “What’s going on?”

  But she was already out of the car, her jacket pulled over her head. Gordon set the parking brake, opened the door, and followed. Cold rain needled his scalp and spattered rainbows on his glasses. He blinked and pursued Dina’s dark silhouette outlined by the floodlights.

  She slowed and Gordon splashed up to her, his shoes half submerged in a puddle. Dina was hunched over, her jacket still pulled up over her head, both hands pressed to her forehead. Suddenly she straightened.

  “They’re in there!” she said. “The captives!”

  Gordon’s heart lurched in his chest. “What?” he said. He stared at her through glasses pebbled by
rainfall. “How do you know?”

  Dina made a frantic gesture, pointed at her head with both forefingers. “I’m seeing through a dog’s eyes!” she said. “I’m looking right at them. Dan’s in there with the others!”

  “Others?” Gordon said.

  Dina frantically started digging into her jacket pockets for her phone. “Gotta call Franny!” she said. “Get a warrant!”

  Her words were buried beneath a torrent of barking. The chain-link fence rattled and bowed under the impact of heavy German shepherd bodies. And then Gordon was dazzled by a battery of floodlights switching on, brilliant halogen beams burning into his eyes …

  “STAY WHERE YOU ARE,” said an amplified voice. “YOU ARE TRESPASSING.”

  “Fuck this,” Dina muttered. She grabbed Gordon’s arm. “Back to the car!”

  She turned as electric motors rolled open the front gate and three dogs raced out, barking. Heart hammering, Gordon readied himself for a doomed sprint to the car. Dina spun again, gestured with the hand that had pulled the phone from her pocket. The dogs slowed, seemingly puzzled. Then two of them stopped and sat down on the wet ground. The third walked timidly up to Dina and sniffed her hand.

  She was in telepathic contact with the dogs, Gordon realized.

  “Can you control them?” he asked.

  “Not control,” she said. “But I can fill their minds with happy thoughts.”

  “Um, good,” Gordon said. His limbs twitched, wanted to run. “What do we do now?”

  “Go to the car. But slowly. You don’t want to run, because that might activate the pack instinct to chase you down.”

  “Okay,” Gordon said. He began easing backwards toward the Volvo. Dina moved with him.

  Lightning sizzled overhead. In the sudden searing brilliance, Gordon saw two men walking out of the IDS gate. One of them had a rifle, the other a pistol. They moved forward onto the floodlit driveway. “You stop there!” one of them called. He was the man Gordon had spoken to earlier, and he wore a cowboy hat against the rain. He brandished his rifle. “We’ll shoot!” he warned.